Smaller than the World Wide Web

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, November 14, 2001

MY FRIEND BRADBURN has a spider in his workplace. He watches the spider while gathering himself. He needs to gather himself on a daily basis because his job involves a lot of spearheading. Spearheading can wear on a guy.

Bradburn's opinion of the spider was not high. "It only has one vertical strand," he wrote me. It seemed to us both that single strand was not the way to go, web-wise. Had Bradburn been spearheading a web project, he would have rejected the single-strand option.

Bradburn is in fact spearheading a Web project, but not that kind.

I wondered whether the spider was deranged in some way. I had heard about certain adolescent spiders that spin inappropriate webs and then fail to maintain them. I went through a period like that myself.

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One day Bradburn found a lovely insect wrapped in spider floss tucked into one corner of the strand. He wrote me about it. I wondered whether the spider was craftier than we had thought, perhaps maintaining other webs in other parts of the office. Maybe each person in the office watches the spider, convinced that it's a private and secret spider creating useful workplace metaphors, and it's really the same spider.

Or maybe the single-strand strategy works if you just stick with it. That's what I want Bradburn's spider to mean. Maybe persistence beats design more often than is commonly supposed. If all you can do is weave a single strand, keep doing that. Don't whine, just wait.

Yum, a nice fat fly.

ICAN SIT on the window seat in the kitchen and see the potted plants on the back deck. When the sun is out, I can see a spider creating a web, using the crested pachypodium, one of the aloes and the railing of the deck.

Mine is not a single-strand spider. Mine does the full concentric-circle thing. It never stops elaborating the design, putting small strands between the load-bearing ones, creating an impenetrable but invisible snare for flying insects. It's going for a 90 percent kill rate.

My spider spends no time at all on moral matters. It's not a geopolitical spider; it does not have to explain its actions to the community of nations. Its policy: First come, first eaten.

Then it rained. Bradburn's spider laughs at rain; my spider is at its mercy.

The heavy rains we had earlier this week wiped out the death web. I stared at the spot in the gray morning light, then went outside to make sure. The rain went down the back of my neck. I peered at the aloe. Web: gone.

Half an hour later, the rain slackened. I thought I saw movement, so I went outside again. The spider was hurling itself off the railing, starting to rebuild the web. I looked up at the lowering sky. "You might want to wait awhile," I said, but the spider went on. Maybe it was in telepathic contact with Bradburn's spider; maybe it knew the lesson of the single strand.

I can see two morals to these tales. One: Persistence is better than a plan.

Two: Location location location.

Either way: Yum, nice fat fly.

LIKE A LOT of people, I am currently seeking guidance on how to live. That hard rain seems to be falling, and my web seems unequal to the task. Even the small victories feel like large defeats.

Bradburn's spider is almost totally clueless. It can't get it together to make a notable contribution. But it does what it can, over and over. It is enough because it has to be enough. My spider dreams bigger, but it experiences deeper disappointment. It starts over because that's the only choice. It is enough because it has to be enough.

The nice fat flies are not guaranteed. That's not news, although it feels like news.